“Holy smoke Batman…Nomea changes everything”

Those of you who know me, know that I’m always on the prowl for the latest tools, techniques and or process tips. Anything that makes sales, inside or otherwise, better faster quicker.

In finding prospects who are interested in what we have to sell now, leverage is very helpful. For example, about a year ago I began using a dialer. Using a dialer tripled my productivity. Before the dialer I could make about 100 calls per day. When I’m on my dialer I can make 300 per day. That’s a big deal.

Another lower tech approach to dial leverage is what the old boiler rooms used to do. They would fill a room with manual dialers who would dial lists as fast as they could. When they got someone on the line, they would manually transfer to a “closer” who was sitting in the middle of the room. This was mostly B2C conman stuff. This would never work for reputable B2B for a million reasons. Anyway.

So here comes this smart company that has found a way to use cheap labor to do cold calling for U.S. based companies. This is certainly not new. There are lots of cold call outsource companies that have call centers in places like India and the Philippines. The rub is that the callers are not native English speakers.

If you are IBM or Microsoft then you can get away with having non native English speakers calling U.S. based executives. If you are not a mega brand, then forget it.

Okay, so what are these guys offering? Their program is that they buy outbound capacity from call centers in India and have the agents dial your target list. When they get the target executive on the phone they transfer to your sales person. The transfer is done so fast the target is not aware it even occurred. This is perfect. A lower cost, non native English speaker does all the work necessary to get the target on the phone, but does not speak to him.

Instead, the call is transfered to a higher cost native English speaker who knows the target’s space and the product being sold. This could be an inside or field sales person.

The Nomea contracted agents, a cluster of them, all dial the list during a two hour window of time. During this two hour period, the sales person receiving the calls, or transfers, stands ready to take the transfers. If the sales person is busy, it rolls over to a backup sales person, so no calls are missed.

So a group of about six agents all make as many calls as they can in a two hour period. When they reach a target, they transfer to the sales person in the U.S. Nomea guarantees five transfers per hour. That’s five target prospect conversations per hour for two hours. This level of productivity far outstrips what any single U.S. based sales person can do, with or without a dialer.

As long as the service is not too expensive it should be a winner. Even if it’s pricey now, it won’t be in a year. The model appears easily duplicable so all the big outsourcers will be on to it soon.

This is a big deal. This is the future of high volume cold calling.

Even though their website is next to useless, it does have a good PDF that uses pictures to describe the process. Go take a look.

Are you passing the first contact test?

Most technology companies aren’t - and it’s costing them.

You spend millions and months on your mix, all to get someone to call you - and then you blow it!

Amazing.

Kristin Zhivago outlines exactly how we drop the ball at a critical time. My only addition to this really good article is, “ditto for email.” Very solid read.

How to spot a dud sales job in under 5 minutes (PSP Elements)

The Silicon Valley job market is pretty hot right now. Especially for sales jobs.

So how is a sales hot shot like you supposed to pick? Assuming you’re looking, of course. As a seasoned technology sales person, you know enough to always be on the lookout for your next opportunity.

Here’s a shortcut. I call it the PSP Elements method. It stands for Problem-Solution-Proof elements.

Go to their Website and look for the following:

1) a prominent and clear description of the problem they solve

2) a prominent and clear description of the solution(s) they offer

3) prominent and clear proof elements (proof that the solution works)

If you can’t find, read and understand all three of these items, in under three minutes, you should drop the job from further consideration.

Here’s why you should drop the job from further consideration:

1) Prospects won’t be as generous as you, they will abandon the effort in under two minutes.

2) If prospects can’t find the information they want (the three items above) quickly and easily, they will disqualify the solution and move on. This will make it harder for you to get leads to develop.

3) Failing to effectively address the three items mentioned above, in under three minutes introduces additional risk into the sales cycle. It will often outright kill the sales cycle. It if it doesn’t kill the sales cycle, it extends it by weeks or months and requires lots more effort on the part of the prospect.

Also, I wouldn’t raise these issues with the hiring company because they won’t see it and they’ll say that you’re wrong as evidenced by the fact that sales have already been made. Don’t buy it unless you hear it from real revenue paying customers.

The vast majority of technology sales jobs are hawking new and largely unproven products, in a massively cluttered market. Cut your risk of failure by at least making sure their Web site is helping and not hindering the cause. Also, unclear Website often means unclear or nonexistent value proposition.

The problem with sales jobs…are you riding a nag?

The problem with sales jobs is that they aren’t all real.

What do I mean by that?

As Gary Bencivenga says in his brilliant article, if the horse is an old nag, no matter how good you are as a sales or marketing person, you will have a rough time and ultimately fail.

On the other hand, if the horse is a winner, then you as the jockey, will get lots of credit and be very successful.

I have experienced this painfully and more than once. You begin selling a product, you know how to sell and love it. You put lots of energy, smarts and leverage into the effort. And still the results are meager.

You are pretty confident the issue is not you, because you’ve done this successfully many times in the past. After a few months, you begin to lose enthusiasm and your efforts decline.

It’s very hard to continue to do something that is obviously not working, at least for me.

The problem is not your professional knowledge and skill. The problem is that you are doing something that is not doable.

If there is no real demand for a product, it’s not going to sell, no matter what you do.

The job of sales is not to create demand, that does not exist, that’s impossible (unless you have a billion dollar budget and a decade or so). Instead the job of sales is to maximize sales and company revenue. To speed the process of customer and revenue acquisition.

A sales job selling a no or low demand product is arguably not a real job. You just can’t win, and that’s no fun.

So, to be successful in sales, you need to be able to find and sell high demand products. You need to avoid demand-less “rocks”.

So how do you find high demand products to sell?

The short answer is to ask prospects and customers BEFORE you take the job.

Don’t pay any attention to what the company tells you. They don’t know.

Easier said than done. So how do you do it?

Pick up the phone and call decision makers and ask them if the product you are considering selling has any real demand. Ask if the problem the product solves is important to them - important enough for them to spend real money on it this year.

You are a sales professional, this should be easy for you.

If you fail to do this work, you will miss your quota and be drummed out in a year or less. Sorry, that’s the truth of the matter. Worse, you’ll hate every minute. Even worse than that, you’ll be made feel that the failing is yours personally, when it’s not.

Don’t waste your time with fake sales jobs.

Read the Bencivenga article, he does a much better job of explaining the concept.

Know, like and trust…do not pass go, do not collect $200

In his most excellent book, Give to Get Marketing, Joe Garcia talks about the concept of know, like and trust.

Joe says that no sale of any kind will result until the prospect knows, likes and trusts you and your company. Truer words were never spoken. Know like and trust takes time and content. It also requires a nurture program.

If you think about it, a sales cycle really is nothing more than the time and actions necessary for a prospect to get to know, like and trust you and your company.

Joe states, “if you were at a party and a stranger came up to you and asked you to marry them, you would say ‘no’, no matter how suitable they may appear to be.” Very true. No one is going to make an important decision like that without knowing, liking and trusting the other person.

And yet, as sales people we seem to often think we can skip the know, like and trust phase. We meet someone and five minutes later, we are parroting some version of, “wannabuymyproduct, wannabuymyproduct…etc…blah. Okay, I exaggerate; but not by much.

Prospects and customers don’t care about our revenue goals, dreams and time-lines. They are not going to budge until we pass know, like and trust with them.

And that’s the beauty and power of a sales lead pipeline. A sales lead pipeline is just like a sales pipeline except that it only contains early stage leads and not “revenue grade” deals close to closing.

A sales lead pipeline is your primary governor. If it’s big, you’ll close lots of deals and make your numbers. If you sales lead pipeline is small…well, you know that story.

Take the time and spend the money necessary to FIRST build a big sales lead pipeline and then begin adding revenue sales people as you pass know, like and trust with significant numbers of then properly qualified leads.

Inside sales compensation survey Q4 of 2005

The good folks over at Phone Works conducted a compensation survey of inside sales professionals working in business to business technology companies.

Here’s the short story:

Sales Development Rep. (lead gen. only, no sales): average annual package: $82k

Sales Development Manager (lead gen. only, no sales): average annual package: $128k

Telesales Rep. (revenue & quota responsibility): average annual package: $107K

Telesales Manager (revenue & quota responsibility): average annual package: $165k

Telesales/Sales Dev. Executives: (managing mangers): average annual package: $206k

Note: Cash compensation only, does not include benefits.

Note: San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley Area.

Click through for an additional bevy of related information.

Kristin Zhivago - smartest technology marketing person…ever!

I’m typically reading three for four books at the same time. I can’t get enough non-fiction technology sales and marketing information.

Most of it is junk, especially the sales stuff. I only recently came across Kristin Zhivago. I wish I would have found her years ago. When I found her Website I just could not stop reading. I then ordered and read her book. Amazing.

I’ve been in technology sales and marketing for over twenty years. I’m here to tell you that I am completely blown away by her complete command of the issues.

Kristin writes so clearly about issues, problems and mistakes that I have lived through several times. It’s more than clear that she understands our issues better than we do.

Do your career and favor and read everything she has ever written.

To nurture or not…

The biggest prospecting/lead generation mistake I see made is failure to nurture new leads. Typically what happens is a company acquires a new lead through one of the usual routes such as a trade show or perhaps cold calling.

The new lead is interested and has spent some time and effort to learn about the solution, but they are not ready to buy now.

Typically what happens is that these leads are qualified to the point of determining that they are not ready to buy now, and then dropped from active management. This is understandable because everyone is focused on making the quarterly number.

Although it’s understandable, it’s also a huge waste and very short sighted. It’s a waste because even a casual review of completed sales cycles quickly reveals that the vast majority of sales take quarters’ to develop and close. If you drop them after the initial contact you effectively retard the process of getting them to know, like and trust you - an absolute prerequisite to them buying anything from you.

Initial contact leads get effectively dropped because there is no plan for them. People assume the sales person will file the lead away and recontact them periodically. Doubtful, for a variety of reasons. Also, 99.9% of all CRMs are not helpful in this regard.
Failing to manage initial contact leads that don’t qualify well is short sighted because sales cycles are long and you (the company) have already spend a bunch of money getting them to raise their hand and declare themselves an early stage lead.

The solution? A simple lead nurturing program. As simple as “touching” all leads coded as nurture status until they mature or die. Once per month you provide them with some relevant, helpful space related information. White papers, cases studies and the like. Better yet, invite them to a Webinar. No selling and no product specific information, unless they ask for it.

If you do it right, he’s what will happen.

month 1: initial contact lead produced (interested but not ready to buy)

month 2: touch

month 3: touch

month 4: touch

month 5: touch

month 6: They call you - sale on - convert and hand-off to field sales.

Yes, it’s an oversimplification. The point is that you need a way to stay with them until they are ready to buy. You need a way to help them cross the know, like and trust hurdle with you. You need to do this in a way that is not the old call from a sale person who says, some version of, “wanna buy my product now.” This only lowers your credibility with prospects.

In summary, feed them high quality, value added information about how to solve the problem you are focused on helping them solve with your solution (but no product information), until they are ready to engage in the sales process. Then kick it over to sales and let them do their stuff.

Tip: The hardest part of this equation is the value added content. Most companies have product information, but not much else, and that’s not helpful.

Tip: If you want to learn how to do the content thing well, read everything Kristin Zhivago has ever written, starting with this.

Zoominfo.com…interesting

Zoominfo.com is a search engine for people and companies. As a sales person, it looks like it might be helpful in finding contact information.

I’m testing it using the free service. They offer an upgrade at $50 per month. The appeal is that the information is presented in a clean and organized manner.

Zoominfo basically collects and organizes information found on the Internet (Web). I’m curious to try the upgraded service as it promises some direct dial phone numbers and some email addresses.

The upgraded service also promises deeper sources of information on the Internet. I’m not sure what that means but It sounds exciting.

Another nice feature is that it automatically creates lists of other people at the same company. For example, if you tell it to find information about Mitsu Fisher, it will find me and list other people who also work at the same company. This can be very helpful when trying to break into an account.

I’m going to continue testing.

Insidesales.com…the last word, for now

Earlier I said that I was done with insidesales.com. I changed my mind. Two things changed my mind.

The first thing is the fact that my test of the Make My Calls dialer was a bust. Insidesales.com does not look so bad by comparison.

The second thing that got insidesales.com back into my good graces was a telephone line issue. I noticed that when I used it from home, it worked a lot better. I decided to try running it on a non-PBX line at work. Bingo. The crash rate went way down. It’s now quite usable.

So, for now, I’m back on insidesales.com for dialing and happy. Well, pretty happy. I just learned the hard way that one of the million reports they offer is not how many dials were made against a given campaign. Hello…anybody home?